Requalification of the Tobacco Factory in Palermo with destination to social finalities

From the Sixties and for many years later the construction of new buildings, bothpublic and residential, has made our cities more and more large, with a greatsquandering of ground, pollution and reduction of the green areas.A necessary trend reversal has implied a growing interest towards the rehabilitationand requalification of the brownfields.These, both inside the urban fabric and in suburban areas, offer complexes ofbuildings with great potentiality for a sustainable reuse both from the social point ofview and from the environmental one.The large dimensions, the great spans and the materials usually used make thesebuildings suitable to a recovery which makes possible a rehabilitation in a buildingscale but also in a territorial scale, through the choice of a social destination whichwould give nourishment to a degraded area .The proposed paper aims to treat the theme of the requalification of the brownfieldsthrough the study of an emblematic case: the Tobacco factory in Palermo, a complexof buildings historically relevant, generated by the aggregation of buildings ofdifferent epochs and with different constructive techniques and materials. It also has asignificative location near the sea and the urban center and could be a really importanteconomic and social resource for the community.The conceived project for the Factory has the aim of the realization of alternativestructures for detained mothers with their children and for ex prisoners who have anyjob o house, to help them in the rehabilitation in society. Sicily is really inadequate inthese fields. This could represent a solution which would permit to use buildingscurrently abandoned and that are suitable spaces and structures to social aims todaywithout a location.